Subscribers to the Move the Sticks podcast feed were left confused on Tuesday night when two new episodes contending to preview the NFC East and NFC West divisions were posted.
But these weren’t any ordinary podcasts. Listeners immediately suspected that the podcasts were AI-generated because of the awkward and unusual nature of the episodes.
NFL preview podcasts are plentiful this time of year, but the offering from the Move the Sticks feed was somewhat confusing as the show hadn’t posted a new episode since June 4. Daniel Jeremiah, one of the usual hosts of the show, said that he no longer was affiliated with the feed when asked about the “weird AI podcast” that had been put up.
No idea. I no longer appear on that old feed. I’m launching a new pod in a new home in the very near future. https://t.co/XPnUKIUS1y
— Daniel Jeremiah (@MoveTheSticks) August 11, 2026
Move the Sticks was caught in the middle of ESPN’s acquisition of the NFL Network. According to Ryan Glasspiegel at Front Office Sports, the podcast feed was retained by the NFL, while Jeremiah stayed with NFL Network in its migration into ESPN. One business taking over a podcast feed from another isn’t shocking — the NFL understandably would like to leverage the listeners already subscribed to the podcast — but the fact that new show was posted that featured the names of hosts no longer affiliated with the show led to confusion.
It’s even more confusing when those podcast episodes sounded a lot like AI slop.
After opening with a stinger that says, “This is an ‘I Heart’ podcast — guaranteed human,” it’s extremely easy to understand why so many fans immediately jumped on the slop train. Rather that starting off with a theme song, or even an introduction of the show and its new hosts, a male voice simply dives into an extremely surface level summary of the latest happenings in each division.
truly bizarre situation https://t.co/3yukoWFzHwpic.twitter.com/vWGxjj9KQU
— Arif Hasan, but NFL (@ArifHasanNFL) August 12, 2026
Even if the new podcast didn’t want to bring up Jeremiah’s name or the previous era of Move the Sticks, a simple introduction of who the heck is talking feels like the very least you might expect.
The generic nature of the preview and the peculiar anonymity of the voice of the show led fans to the reasonable assumption that there was some AI shenanigans happening here, but in a statement to Front Office Sports, the NFL said that was not the case.
An NFL spokesperson told Front Office Sports: “NFL Media is in the process of re-branding Move the Sticks and revamping its content plan following the acquisition of NFL Network by ESPN. The episode posted on 8/11 was a compilation of team previews from the NFL’s YouTube page and not AI generated/hosted.”
Severalsocial mediacommenters online noted that it was the same voice that has done similarly broad videos for the NFL. Here’s a video from the 2022 season highlighting some end-of-season awards. The description of the video identifies the host as simply “Game Preview Guy.”
If you go to the NFL’s YouTube page, there are similar videos with voiceover work featuring the same voice, including previews for individual teams and player-specific videos showing the history of stars like Saquon Barkley and Bijan Robinson since they joined the league.
But in a video posted to the NFL’s YouTube page on Wednesday, the voice went out of its way to introduce itself.
“Here are the 10 biggest preseason stories you can track, brought to you by me, Game Preview Guy. No AI slop around here. Just GPG slop if you will.”
Given the timing of the video drop, it feels like the introduction is a direct response to the accusations of AI use that came against the league the previous day. A footnote at the bottom of the screen jokes that the voice is “Not artificial. Not all that intelligent.”
So it would appear that Game Preview Guy has been around for some time, but again, everyone’s confusion is more than justified.
Given how Game Preview Guy was introduced to a new audience (that introduction being “none at all”), hearing the voice and thinking slop is not a hard jump to make. At this point, it feels like Game Preview Guy is either a guy who just had one of the weirdest days at work you could possibly imagine, or maybe AI was used to edit the episode together, but the voice behind Game Preview Guy is in fact real according to the league.
In our wonderful AI-driven future, it is understandable that people are confused about what’s real and what’s not. But at the very least the league will want to remove the names of the previous, definitely for sure human hosts of the podcast before pushing forward further with Game Preview Guy, whatever his identity may be.
The post Bizarre ‘Move the Sticks’ podcast saga introduces the world to NFL Game Preview Guy appeared first on Awful Announcing.
Leave a Comment